A Lady of Quality eBook

She used all her modest skill in fitting to her own
shape and refurnishing the cast-off bits of finery
bestowed upon her. It was all set to rights
long before Clorinda recalled to mind that she had
promised that Anne should sometime see her chance
visitors take their dish of tea with her.

But one day, for some cause, she did remember, and
sent for her.

Anne ran to her bed-chamber and donned her remodelled
gown with shaking hands. She laughed a little
hysterically as she did it, seeing her plain snub-nosed
face in the glass. She tried to dress her head
in a fashion new to her, and knew she did it ill and
untidily, but had no time to change it. If she
had had some red she would have put it on, but such
vanities were not in her chamber or Barbara’s.
So she rubbed her cheeks hard, and even pinched them,
so that in the end they looked as if they were badly
rouged. It seemed to her that her nose grew red
too, and indeed ’twas no wonder, for her hands
and feet were like ice.

“She must be ashamed of me,” the humble
creature said to herself. “And if she
is ashamed she will be angered and send me away and
be friends no more.”

She did not deceive herself, poor thing, and imagine
she had the chance of being regarded with any great
lenience if she appeared ill.

“Mistress Clorinda begged that you would come
quickly,” said Rebecca, knocking at the door.

So she caught her handkerchief, which was scented,
as all her garments were, with dried rose-leaves from
the garden, which she had conserved herself, and went
down to the chintz parlour trembling.

It was a great room with white panels, and flowered
coverings to the furniture. There were a number
of ladies and gentlemen standing talking and laughing
loudly together. The men outnumbered the women,
and most of them stood in a circle about Mistress
Clorinda, who sat upright in a great flowered chair,
smiling with her mocking, stately air, as if she defied
them to dare to speak what they felt.

Anne came in like a mouse. Nobody saw her.
She did not, indeed, know what to do. She dared
not remain standing all alone, so she crept to the
place where her sister’s chair was, and stood
a little behind its high back. Her heart beat
within her breast till it was like to choke her.

They were only country gentlemen who made the circle,
but to her they seemed dashing gallants. That
some of them had red noses as well as cheeks, and
that their voices were big and their gallantries boisterous,
was no drawback to their manly charms, she having seen
no other finer gentlemen. They were specimens
of the great conquering creature Man, whom all women
must aspire to please if they have the fortunate power;
and each and all of them were plainly trying to please
Clorinda, and not she them.

And so Anne gazed at them with admiring awe, waiting
until there should come a pause in which she might
presume to call her sister’s attention to her
presence; but suddenly, before she had indeed made
up her mind how she might best announce herself, there
spoke behind her a voice of silver.